So it's not good enough to be straight if you want to remain in scouting; you also have to be religious.
[Eagle Scout] Lambert, who is 19 and has been an atheist since studying evolution in the ninth grade, was told to abide by the vow of reverence by next week or get out.Two years ago the Supreme Court said it was ok for the Boy Scouts to discriminate against homosexuals. It's unlikely anything will stop the organization from discriminating against the un-American belief that there is no god.As Mr. Lambert described it, he was given a week to find God.
"They say that I should think about what I really believe and get back to them," he said. "I have thought about this for years. Can they expect me to change my beliefs in seven days?"
A national spokesman for the Boy Scouts, Gregg K. Shields, describes this latest assertion of the organization's right to bigotry and superstition as simply a matter of doing the right thing for its members.
Mr. Shields said for the Boy Scouts to insist on anything less would be unfair to the five million members. "It would be a disservice to all the other members to allow someone to selectively obey or ignore our rules," he said.The last paragraph above is the NYTimes editorializing. It would be nice if the paper, in its usual reporting of political news, showed even half the courage it shows in this article.As for the other 11 points of the Scout Law, Mr. Shields could not say whether anyone had been ejected for being untrustworthy, disloyal, unhelpful, unfriendly, discourteous, unkind, disobedient, cheerless, unthrifty, cowardly or sloppy.